All the ways to measure Minnesota's warm winter

We had a 10-day cold snap but it’s back to our incredibly mild winter, which is on track to potentially be the warmest of 151 years. Our latest, prolonged warmup could set the stage for February.

Winter average temperature, so far 

By far, we had the warmest December on record statewide and in the Twin Cities. So far, January is also running above normal too, even with our 10 cold days midmonth. 

Snowfall has been very much lacking as well. Most of Minnesota continues to be behind by an astounding 10 to 20 inches of snowfall since the start of the season. In the Twin Cities, we only saw 2 inches of snowfall in January, making it the eighth least-snowiest on record.

Helping to boost winter and January average temperatures is this end of month winter “heat wave” that will spill into early February. Not only are the high temperature well above normal but especially the overnight lows.

Friday morning’s lows tied or broke at least five records in our longer term climate reporting sites. The Twin Cities tied its record warm low of 35 degrees while Duluth, International Falls, Hibbing and St. Cloud broke theirs. 

The strong El Niño and lack of snow cover has helped boost those temperatures but undeniably climate change is at work also.

Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index, which measures the impact of climate change on temperatures, puts these readings at a 3, which means the warming temperatures of winter have made these record warm lows three times more likely.

Winter temperatures have warmed on average five degrees across the state but that change in the average has an exponential impact on extreme highs and lows. 

February could be decisive 

When we plug in forecast highs and lows for the remainder of January, we are taking the number one spot for the warmest winter out of 151 years of records in the Twin Cities.

The close second place is the winter of 1877-78. That February (the last month of meteorological winter for statistics) averaged 31.5 degrees, which is 11.1 degrees above our modern average for February.

In order for for this winter to maintain its top spot, we’d need to be 10.6 degrees above normal or warmer for February average temperature. The official outlook for February calls for a high likelihood of above-normal temperatures. 

All of our longer term climate models forecast a warm February, but vary on how much. The median forecast temperature anomaly for the Twin Cities for February is about plus-6 to plus-7 degrees. 

But I will add, that the models underestimated both December and January warmth.

While the models forecasted a strong warmer-than-normal signal in December, the December average ended up being twice as much as forecast and similar underestimates occurred for January. Forecast models have a difficult time with such large temperature departures from normal. 

Twin Cities climatologist Mark Seeley did an analysis of similar strong El Niño episodes such as this season and found that those Februarys in Minnesota averaged 10.6 degrees above normal, the magic number to keep us at No. 1 this year.